The welfare state is unsustainable economically, socially and morally.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Justice and injustice

Just finished reading Liberty Scott's post featuring a case of carping, chronic entitlitis when I came across this:

Liberty means the security given to each man that, if he employs his
energies to sustain the struggle on behalf of himself and those he cares
for, he shall dispose of the product exclusively as he chooses. It is
impossible to know whence any definition or criterion of justice can be
derived, if it is not deduced from this view of things; or if it is not
the definition of justice that each shall enjoy the fruit of his own
labor and self-denial, and of injustice that the idle and the
industrious, the self-indulgent and the self-denying, shall share
equally in the product.

22 comments:

I think the whole problem with the debate of individual rights/liberty versus state-mandated entitlements is that you can't concede the principle that the state can take a little of your money (to give to the less-advantaged) without conceding it has the moral right to take the lot. James Delingpole describes this as the "dog-shit yoghurt" principle. For those of us who don't like dog-shit in our yoghurt, compromising on a little bit is conceding the whole pot.

To put it another way, if you accept the most deserving beneficiary has a moral right to money forcibly extracted from taxpayers, then you accept that Heather Frost (the beneficiary mother of 13 Liberty Scott mentioned) has a moral right to her money and new house too.

Heather Frost has done nothing wrong. She didn't lobby for the system to be put in place. She is certainly taking advantage of it.

But so too do millionaires at their end of the tax processes, take advantage of the law to minimise their taxes, and to maximise the benefits of subsidies.

Why are we singling out this woman who is doing what every other person in the nation is doing - she is complying with the system. Sheesh we can be hypocrites at times.

We have f..ked up her life. She has not f..ked up ours.

And the same stupid attitudes permeate the discussion still. We say: "That will teach "him" where not to "stick it" where he did. Bullshit! If "he" didn't stick it there, she would have got someone else to stick it there".

You can't have a system which incentivises rooting, and then penalise/tax the person/people who have done nothing more than fall into line with the system, and that includes incentivising the guy to accept the temptation of a free root when it's in front of him.

Liable parent support has not prevented one woman who wanted to get pregnant, from getting pregnant. And for all we know, she might have used a dozen or dozens of donors to ensure that it happened.

So based on the lottery that the sperm/egg race is, we tax/penalise the poor sod for 18 years, in the forlorn hope that some tail-wagging-of-the-dog will rub off and the poor bloke might not stick it there next time.

Don't be so fucking rude. I am on the same planet as you are. Comment on the topic, not on me.

You voted didn't you, Mark Hubbard?

So you are just as responsible as anyone else for setting this system up that rewards someone for having the natural maternal urge to make babies.

As long as you deny that you, Mark, are the problem here, and that you pass on your absurd lack of voting responsibility to one of the millions of people who take advantage of government handouts, then you continue to be the problem.

Responsibility Mark. The voter is the problem here, not Heather Frost.

And if you told me in real life that for having an opinion that differs from yours, that I'm from another planet, and that I am more dangerous than the Frosts of the world, I would probably punch your lights out. So don't be so damned rude as to presume that it's okay to speak like this, just because it is the internet.

I will bet, that there is some government handout that you took advantage of in the last 12 months. But it's okay for you to, but not for Frost.

Mark Hubbard. It's hers, not her's. And it's theirs, not their's. (I wouldn't have bothered with this, but you got both wrong, so you have a systemic problem, not just a spelling problem, and I don't like language viruses like this being spread.)

So please explain to me again how Heather Frost is taking something that is not hers.

(All this is leaving aside of course the question of her being British)

What is Heather Frost taking that voters didn't provide for her to take/ What is she taking that voters didn't incentivise her to take advantage of?

How can we be so stupid as to have a system in NZ which incentivises reckless female rooting while theoretically disincentivising reckless male rooting. Seems to me that this is the complete antithesis of what Mother Nature intended.

How can grown people possibly think that disincentivising males from rooting will stop a growth in single motherhood, while the ones with all the control - the females - are deliberately getting pregnant because it's so richly rewarded?

We (and it's the collective "we") are blind stupid. But that's Nanny State for you.

I don't believe in a social democracy, that is,voting, Johnny. It's a mobocracy; tyranny of the majority.

Here's an example: there are 10 people in the democracy, 4 black people and 6 white people. A plebiscite is held on the proposition that white people are entitled to live off the effort of black people, and that this be enacted by means of an income tax. Guess what: the proposition is won by 6 votes to 4: a majority decision taken democratically just enslaved black people again.

How do you feel about that morally?

I never f******g voted for the state to take my earnings, just as I never voted for Frost to make a lifestyle off my earnings. You can bet she made a conscious choice to do this, and you bet it's her fault. And what's the chances, do you think, of her voting to dismantle the welfare state?

Figure out your contradictions and you might save yourself. You say people like Frost are not responsible for their actions, then you starting warbling to me about responsibility?

Your mind is the perfect example of how the West was lost: rank stupidity, led from every teacher at the front of every classroom.

And by the way Johnny, yes this is the Internet, I hope that's the only reason why you're intimating physical violence: regardless, unlike you, I'm posting under my name, as I blog under my real identity also at:

http://lifebehindtheirondrape.blogspot.co.nz/

The civilised society is dependent on the non-initiation of force: it took you three posts on this thread to show your colours. But then if you were to hit me, I guess you wouldn't be responsible for your actions, the incentives just happened to lead you to it; right?

".. and because I don't vote, that gives me the absolute right to be critical of every single decision every government makes."

What a stunningly hypocritical stance. Mark Hubbard, the perfect man who has never in his life made a political blunder, because he has never in his life made a decision. But he can criticise everyone else's taking of a stance.

I think Richard, that I explained my premises well. I think you are nitpicking, in preference to thinking for yourself. But I will go through it again, just for you.

Heather Frost did nothing that the system wasn't set up for her to do. She took full advantage of the system, as many people do. Indeed, public servants are required to explain the system to people so that they can get their full entitlements. Frost did nothing wrong.

But the system that you Richard (of course, in the NZ example) provided for her. And I provided for her. And I hate that we provided it for her.

Clear enough for you now?

I don't condemn Frost for simply taking advantage of the system. And it is hypocrisy in the extreme for so many others to so readily condemn her. It isn't her fault.

Yes, you might be a libertarian. But even being a libertarian must always recognise that society will never be 100 percent libertarian around you.

Just because you have libertarian views, doesn't mean that everyone else is required to have them outside of the actual system within which those people actually live their lives.

This woman is entitled to live her life within the circumstances that she exists in, not according to some extremist ideology that is several planets removed from this lady's actual everyday existence.

Now please don't nitpick my comments again. Richard, you are usually a lot smarter than this.

God, the internet brings out the worst in humanity. As much as I love the internet, I'm glad most of my life was lived before the internet exposed that there is a very ugly animal, an innate tyrant, inside nearly every one of us humans.

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About Me

Lindsay Mitchell has been researching and commenting on welfare since 2001. Many of her articles have been published in mainstream media and she has appeared on radio,tv and before select committees discussing issues relating to welfare. Lindsay is also an artist who works under commission and exhibits at Wellington, New Zealand, galleries.